


Growing Pains

by s1lverwren



Series: 12 days of christmas [3]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, this is all so ooc i love it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:08:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27928789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s1lverwren/pseuds/s1lverwren
Summary: A look into the life of the Jareau-Prentiss family.
Relationships: Jennifer "JJ" Jareau/Emily Prentiss
Series: 12 days of christmas [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2045071
Kudos: 27





	Growing Pains

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr saw it first.

Emily was having far too much fun with this, and she knew that. But, it was far too enjoyable to watch JJ fail at feeding their daughter to not have fun with it, so she didn’t feel so bad. 

JJ dropped her head onto the highchair’s table and looked over at Emily with wide, tired eyes. “Why are you smiling at this?”  
  
Emily shrugged, resting her own head on her hand. “It’s funny. And you’re both adorable.”

Rosie made a gurgling noise, and JJ’s face brightened. “Hey, hun! Ready to eat?” 

She grabbed the jar of food and the small spoon and held a scoop out to her daughter. Emily snorted as the baby turned away from it, with the air of a renowned food critic finding a meal not to her taste.

“Open wide! Come on, eat your dinner!” JJ’s coo barely coated her frustration

“It probably tastes awful.”

JJ scoffed. “It doesn’t-” she interrupted herself and looked at the brown mush with a slight frown. “Okay, I’ll give her that. It is pretty bad. But it’s good for you!” Her voice sweetened at the last sentence in an attempt to appeal to Rosie.

The baby wasn’t impressed.

Sensing her wife’s frustration, Emily moved over and ran her fingers through their daughter’s hair. “Hey, honey. If Mommy promises to eat one bite, will you eat your dinner?” Then, with a show of telling Rosie a secret, she bent down and whispered, “Don’t tell her I said this, but she’s kind of hot when she’s mad.”  
  
“I hate you. Don’t taint her mind like that.” 

“She’s seven months old! You think she understands what I’m saying?”  
  
JJ ignored her, turning back to the child. She knocked some of the food already in the spoon back into the jar and held up the remaining for Rosie to see. With an incredibly fake looking smile, she put the spoon in her mouth.

“See? Yummy! Chicken and gravy! So good!” 

Rosie seemed appeased, but JJ turned her face away for a moment and blanched. Emily laughed and sat back down, watching her two girls affectionately.

“Want a bite?” The blonde held another spoonful out, and, this time, Rosie took it.

“Thank god,” she sighed.

Emily shrugged. “I was having fun.”

JJ rolled her eyes and smiled brightly at Rosie as she opened her mouth for another scoop. “Of course you were- you relish in chaos.”

“Putting that on my business card, thank you very much.”

JJ held the jar in front of her face and put it back down to get another spoonful. “Only two more bites! You’re doing so good!”

Rosie gave a single-toothed grin at the praise and ate the scoop JJ held out for her.

“You’re really losing your touch, Jareau,” Emily teased. “No theatrics? No fancy gimmick? I can’t believe this. No wonder Ro didn’t want to eat it.”

“You are really, truly, the worst,” she replied through a smile as the last of the baby food was eaten. 

Rosie opened her mouth for more, but Emily shook her head. “Sorry, babe. That’s all you get.” She swept the little girl out of the chair and was handed a pacifier.

“I have a couple of calls I need to take, can you put her to bed?” 

After forty minutes of struggle and the formation of an aching pain between Emily’s eyes, Rosie was finally changed, bathed, and dressed. They were standing over the crib in the nursery lovingly decorated by Morgan and Penelope. Well, mainly Morgan. Penelope just told him where to put everything.

“Hey, it’s my favorite time of the day! Bedtime!” Emily told her daughter as she placed her in the crib. Rosie was not as enthused and began to wail. “Oh, no, no, no, it’s okay. You’re okay.”  
  
The baby wailed even louder as Emily picked her back up. Grabbing a pacifier from the dresser, she cradled her to her shoulder, rubbing her back soothingly. She rocked gently, praying the gentle movement will cease the crying.

It did not.  
  
“Come on, Ro. It’s okay,” Emily said as the crying grew louder. She winced slightly as the pain in her head grew. 

“Do you want me to sing? That always works when JJ does it.” Emily was struck with the horrifying fact that she did not know any nursery rhymes. “Uh- Hush little baby, don’t say a word. Mommy has a headache and your crying hurts.”  
  
The sound of JJ cackling came from down the hall. “Are you guilt tripping our daughter into falling asleep?”

Emily leaned her head onto Rosie’s slightly and shushed her. “Nothing else is working.”  
  
“Didn’t you just say that she wasn’t old enough to understand what we were saying?”  
  
“Shut up,” Emily snapped, but there was no real menace behind her words.

JJ smiled and held her arms out. “I can take her if you want.”  
  
“Rosie, it’s okay, baby,” Emily patted her back gently again and shook her head. “No, it’s okay. You struggled to feed her, I’ll struggle to get her to sleep.”  
  
“Okay, but I did not struggle to feed her!”  
  
Emily laughed lightly. “You had to eat the food for her to even think about it!”

“That’s fair enough, but I entirely blame you. You suggested it to her.”  
  
“Hey. ‘She doesn’t understand us,’ remember?”

Caught up in their back-and-forth, neither of them noticed the disappearance of the wailing.  
  
JJ shook her head and leaned into the doorframe. “She’s smart, she knows what she’s doing.”  
  
“Then she’d be a Spencer Reid type-a kid if she understood something like that.”  
  
“Why wouldn’t we want a kid as smart as Spence?”

Emily raised her eyebrows. “I love that kid, I really do. But the world doesn’t need more than one of him. Isn’t that right, Ro? Oh.” She stopped rocking as she finally took in the silence of the room.

Their eyes met over the top of a wispy head of hair, and they moved in unison. JJ turned off the lights as Emily gently placed the sleeping baby into the crib and turned on the baby monitor. She shot her wife a look as she came to stand next to her in the doorway.

“Nice job, you bored her to sleep,” she whispered to the blonde, who was staring trance-like at the sleeping form of their daughter.

“I remember when Henry was this age. I cried and cried when he wanted to feed himself and he was old enough to know when it was bedtime,” she smiled slightly and looked at the woman beside her. “Is it wrong for me to wish that they never grow up and I can keep my baby forever?”

Emily shook her head as she swung the door shut, careful not to make much noise. “No. I kind of want that too.”


End file.
